Like most of the world, or at least most of the United States, I’ve grown tired of watching society fall apart. What really bother’s me is that nobody seems to know why. A lot of people blame polarization between the right and the left, but if that’s the case then why is the Left willing to compromise when the right is not? And why is there nothing the Right will agree to? To me it looks less like a disagreement between two ideas and more like a power struggle between two different groups with conflicting goals, where the only thing they agree on is that compromise is the worst outcome of any discussion they have.
It goes much deeper than just division between the democratic and republican parties. In order to understand why they’re fighting, you can’t just look at who’s in charge, you have to look at how they got to be in charge, which in theory is by convincing the population of whatever state they’re from to vote for them. In practice, it’s more complicated than that.
The biggest issue is that while the United States is a democracy on paper, a lot of power is held by people we never elected. The CEOs, Billionaires, and Pundits of the United States. How they got their power varies, but what they all have in common is they didn’t get power via political channels, they got it by convincing a portion of society that they were worthy of having it. Maybe because they were elected to be in charge of a successful business, maybe because they inherited money, maybe because they were good entertainers, but however they got their power, they influence society while most of us have no say on the subject, because we aren’t in the choir they preach to.
This means that, in the Republican party especially, the problem isn’t limited to the politicians. Most of it is in the hands of those telling stories they know their audience wants to hear. Stories of how life was better back when you didn’t have to see the suffering of others and those who weren’t members of society knew better than to speak up. It’s a narrative that’s familiar and comforting, and if you’ve never been confronted with systemic oppression, it’s one that makes total sense.
It’s this narrative that’s tearing America apart.
It’s not a story that’s limited to the United States of course. It’s as old as humanity itself. The idea that things were better before is a story we all tell ourselves less because it’s true and more because we can easily imagine the past, and our minds all need a place to retreat to when the world feels overwhelming. But it’s a dangerous story. It’s a story about how the world was better before the world changed, regardless of if it’s true. It’s a story that puts the blame on others for changing the world, for making it worse than it was. It’s a story that says we’re better than them, that we’re inherently good, because we come from a time when things were better, and they’re evil for deciding to change things. In a world where a small amount of people holds all the power, where those with the most power can’t be replaced, and where those with power have all the incentive to stop things from changing, it’s poisonous.
It’s time we abandoned it.
We need to start telling a different story, one where good and bad are relative, where change is the way we express to the world what we want from it. We need to stop treating society as inherently good, when I feel it’s become increasingly clear that it isn’t. It’s only good if we put in the effort to create a society that disincentivizes evil and promotes good, and then put in the effort to make sure that’s true. Most importantly, we need to acknowledge that what people want from the world will change as we learn more about ourselves and as people move from place to place. That’s the point. The world wasn’t meant to be static; it was meant to be dynamic, a place where you could build the world you wanted and where all your choices made an impact. The point of existing is to bring meaning to a world that would be meaningless without the beings that live in it.
Instead we’ve built a society where everything sucks, and nobody has any real way of changing it beyond praying to the gods and hoping that they’re willing to listen. Worse, those in charge can’t see what the issue is, because the world belongs to them. They don’t care about those who keep them in power, because from their perspective there’s no way they could be replaced. We keep going along with this because we’ve bought into the idea that there’s no way we could changed this. We had no choice. Without society, we lose everything. But what that means is that everyone participating in society is asking themselves the same question, “What is the point to any of this?”
I don’t know if it’s possible to build a society where the rich won’t take everything from us, where we aren’t either swimming in more money than we know what to do with or struggling to just barely survive. But I’m tired of everyone saying that we need to hope, because hope is the only thing that will change things, as if living in denial means that the darkness looming over us will just go away. This won’t be easy. We will lose a lot. And when it’s over, we won’t even be sure if we made the right answer. But I don’t want to be stuck in the present because we as a species are deeply averse to the idea that our world isn’t as real as we think it is. This is our world. I know we can change it. But first, we have to believe we can.
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